The fate of the annual New Years Eve celebration in Times Square will be decided this week.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said Sunday that a decision will be made before Christmas on whether to hold the event as before the pandemic. A decision to be made as the Omicron variant spreads rapidly through the city and officials scramble to increase testing capacity amid increased demand.
Last year’s New Year’s Eve celebration in Times Square was an event that respects physical distance and was attended by only small groups of essential workers. This November, the Democrat announced that the event would return “in full force” with the requirement that attendees show proof of vaccination and those who cannot be vaccinated due to a disability show proof of a negative COVID-19 test.
Mayor Bill de Blasio called the Omicron variant a “fast and temporary phenomenon” that is expected to increase in the coming weeks and then likely to dissipate. He noted that the majority of city residents are vaccinated, making the recent outbreak more manageable than when COVID-19 appeared in early spring 2020.
According to city statistics, about 90% of adults and about 80% of all residents have received at least one dose of the vaccine.
“It is important not to fight yesterday’s war,” de Blasio said. “It is important not to think that we are back in the spring of 2020 or even the winter of 2020. This is a highly vaccinated city where people have much more protection than ever.”
For the third day in a row, New York State recorded a record number of new COVID-19 cases: nearly 22,500, about 12,400 of those new cases were in New York City. The state has averaged about 16,300 new cases per day in the seven-day period ending Saturday. That is 60% higher than the previous week.
The mayor and health officials announced Thursday that the city would provide 1 million free N95 masks and 500,000 free home tests, to be distributed through community organizations.
They said on Sunday eight new fixed site test sites and 17 new mobile units would open this week, bringing the city’s totals to 36 fixed sites and 93 mobile units, with more anticipation.
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